E2open Parent Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ETWO) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Marje Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely. So as mentioned, as you’re referencing, we had mentioned that we expect second half for the subscription business to be better and that’s primarily driven really the first half, the churn being more first half weighted this year. And then, as you mentioned, we have seen some large deals closed in Q1, which is encouraging. But again in terms of the macro and overall, I would say, it’s as expected sort of stabilizing, but we’re not seeing anything very different than what we discussed two months ago in terms of the macro impact. And then on the services side, as we mentioned earlier, we do expect services revenues to be sort of flat to slightly up in Q2 and we are seeing some encouraging signs in the business, very excited about the new leadership there and just really the momentum that some of the changes are taking on and we’re really hopeful that second half will be better based on the initial signs.

And again, no real change in terms of what we saw when we last spoke two months ago.

Operator: Okay. The next question comes from Fred Lee with Credit Suisse. Please proceed.

Fred Lee: Hi, Michael and Marje. Good to hear from you. Last quarter, just to spend a little bit more on macro, just because last quarter you talked about the first half being tougher than the second half for fiscal ’24. I was just wondering if macro deteriorated sequentially from fiscal — from Q4 to Q1, it sounds like it stabilized a little bit, but I was just wondering just to be crystal clear if it’s deteriorated or if it’s stabilized into the end of Q1?

Michael Farlekas: Hi, Fred. How you’re doing? I don’t think it’s deteriorated. I mean it’s still — the market is still choppy. And you look at kind of in other parts of our business, especially on the freight side, still kind of trying to work it through its process. On the trucking side, you see that all over the place. But I don’t really think it’s deteriorating. I just think it’s choppy. Some company is doing well, some companies not doing so well. So I just think it’s choppy for right now. But I would not say it’s deteriorating, I’d say more — it’s more on the stabilizing side than deteriorating at this point. That’s how I’d characterize it.

Fred Lee: Okay. That’s good to hear. My second question is related to your appetite for incremental acquisitions. Now that the integration of logistics sounds like it’s largely behind the company, it sounds like most synergies have been realized, have valuations come in the private marketplace enough to peak your interest?

Michael Farlekas: Yeah. Listen, we grow our business through acquisitions and we have a great mechanism through that. However, for us to really realize the potential we see, we really kind of need to focus our attention on a sustainable organic growth rate and kind of a more regular way sales organization as we are a scaled business now in our revenue size, that’s our primary focus. I don’t think it will be our primary focus forever, but is our primary focus for the time being. And in terms of valuations, look, there’s going to be a time when all these smaller companies come to market, I don’t think it’s yet there yet and I think price expectations are still pretty high. So I think now is a great time for us to build an organic sales engine that we know we can.

Fred Lee: Got it. Thank you. My last question is just related to your conviction in churn declining in the back half as we kind of look through your subscription revenue, the implied numbers and the growth in the back half of the year, how do we gain conviction that trend is going to downtick over the next couple of quarters? Thank you.